You Want a Social Life, with Friends

By Kenneth Koch



You want a social life, with friends.

A passionate love life and as well

To work hard every day. What's true

Is of these three you may have two

And two can pay you dividends

But never may have three.



There isn't time enough, my friends--

Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends--

To find the time to have love, work, and friends. Michelangelo had

feeling For Vittoria and the Ceiling

But did he go to parties at day's end?



Homer nightly went to banquets

Wrote all day but had no lockets

Bright with pictures of his Girl.

I know one who loves and parties

And has done so since his thirties

But writes hardly anything at all.